ERNST ELECTED IN A LANDSLIDE
RED OAK – A Stanton graduate, a Red Oak resident, and a former Montgomery County auditor is Iowa’s newest United States Senator.
Joni Ernst’s improbable and meteoritic political rise reached national prominence Tuesday with her lopsided win over Democrat Bruce Braley as the Republican party regained control of the U.S. Senate.
“Well Iowa, we did it. We did it,” Ernst stated in her acceptance speech Tuesday night in West Des Moines. “It’s a long way from Red Oak to Washington. From the biscuit line at Hardees to the United States Senate. But thanks to all of you we are heading to Washington. And we are going to make ‘em squeal.”
With mostly urban areas comprising early results, Braley led by about 25,000 votes with 35 percent of the vote counted. However, Ernst quickly closed that gap as the rural counties started reporting results, and with half of the votes counted, she had taken a lead she would never lose.
By the end of the night, Ernst won easily by a 52-44 percent margin, or nearly 100,000 votes.
A 1988 Stanton High School graduate, Ernst attended college at Iowa State University and joined the Iowa National Guard. Ernst was quickly promoted through the Guard’s ranks and is still actively serving at the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. In fact, after her election, Ernst spent the weekend training with her guard unit.
Following a deployment in the second Gulf War, Ernst returned home to Montgomery County with her husband Gail and successfully ran for auditor in 2004 and was re-elected in 2008.
Ernst’s journey to Washington D.C. began in earnest in 2010 after Terry Branstad and Kim Reynolds were elected governor and lieutenant governor.
Ernst was nominated to run as the Republican candidate for the remaining two years on Reynolds’ term in the Iowa Senate, and she easily defeated Democrat Ruth Smith.
Ernst was elected to a second term in the Iowa Senate in 2012 when she ran unopposed. Then after longtime U.S. Senator Tom Harkin announced he wouldn’t be seeking another term, Ernst joined a five-person race for the Republican nomination.
Early in the primary campaign, Ernst was tracking about third behind Mark Jacobs and Matt Whitaker. However, that quickly changed when Ernst launched her first television advertisement, in which she touted her agriculture background, including a time in her life when she castrated hogs on her parents’ farm. Promising to “make ‘em squeal” by “cutting pork” in Washington D.C., Ernst captured the spotlight throughout the state and the nation.
Throughout the rest of the campaign, Ernst emphasized her unique qualifications as a mother and a member of the military and easily won the primary, receiving more votes than the other four candidates combined.
During her acceptance speech, she outlined many of the problems the country needs to address.
“This morning I was voting in Red Oak and as I looked around, I noticed that this is (alot) different from Washington D.C.,” she said. “In Washington, politicians are more interested in talking than doing. They ignore problems hoping they will go away. But you know what, ISIS isn’t just going to go away. The nearly $18 trillion in national debt isn’t just going to go away. Our economic struggles aren’t just going to go away. And our problems aren’t just going to go away on their own.
“But we can overcome them ... because this is the greatest nation in the history of mankind. And there is nothing we can’t achieve. We are going to do this. But to get there, it starts with new leadership. And that is what Iowa has voted for today.”
Ernst also stressed the “Iowa values” she promises to bring to Washington D.C., while remembering growing up in Stanton and wearing plastic bread bags to protect her good school shoes on rainy days.
“Our parents didn’t have much, but what they did have, they worked very hard for,” she said. “They taught us to live simply, not to waste and to help our neighbors. And they taught us to thank God every day that we live in this special place called Iowa.”